The NHL's busiest team since Gary Bettman and Don Fehr ended the game's dumbest lockout, allowed itself to exhale, Friday, and you could almost feel the breeze as it lined up for the annual team photo.

After 42 games in 83 days, a tour schedule that would make Bruce Springsteen proud, players were sent home Friday and told not to show up again until Sunday morning.

Even the mad professors of the coaching fraternity were going home to put their feet up, not tinker with game plans.

"There will be none of that," head man Claude Noel vowed. "All the tinkering will be in my garage. I'm going to let my mind go free. I'm going to be a regular Winnipegger. And just do something else."

The problem is, many regular Winnipeggers use idle time to fret about their hockey team.

Thanks to three straight wins, Noel won't.

"It's just to re-charge. I need it," he said. "And so do players. No one else has 42 games. That's a tilt. And they're intense. And that's hard.

"I'm just thankful we won some games, because that makes it a way more enjoyable weekend. If you had lost a couple of games you wouldn't be letting your mind go free. It just wouldn't let go. It'd be lingering in there."

Noel has cause for optimism.

After a season of ups and downs during which you wondered at times if enough players cared or were even paying attention to the coach, the Jets seem to have a new purpose, just in time.

It reminds Noel of a Manitoba Moose season three years ago.

After a regular season that nearly drove him crazy, a switch went on when the playoffs began.

"We went to two seven-game series, and we started, finally, to play," the coach recalled. "And I thought, 'finally' -- 82 games I went through, and we got in the playoffs and we started to go. I thought, 'Seriously?' In all my years coaching I'd never had that happen through the course of a season. Ever."

If the Jets manage to go seven games in a single playoff round, the season will be a step forward for a team that doesn't have a post-season history worth revisiting.

Can it?

Sure.

Because as taxing as the Jets' schedule has been, they're about to reap the rewards.

No other team has a four-day break right now, then another at the end of the regular season.

The Jets will be the most rested team in the NHL when it matters most.

"We don't have any excuse as far as travel, the rest of the way," Ron Hainsey said. "The difficult part of our schedule was over last week. There's no reason we can't continue to have good energy, good legs, and be ready to go."

Hainsey has never played a Stanley Cup playoff game, and he's far from alone.

A spot in the post-season is there for the taking, and it'll be interesting to see how the old Atlanta Thrashers respond.

One of the non-Thrashers, Olli Jokinen, was in a similar position in Calgary last year, only to see it snatched away by the L.A. Kings' hot finish.

"In Altanta usually this team has been way out of playoff position this time of year," Jokinen said. "So it's a great experience for the players, and a great challenge at the same time.

"We don't want to be here in two weeks and say, 'Oh, we were close.' That's not the mindset. We have this couple days off now to get energized for that last stretch, and we're going to be ready in the playoffs once we get in there."

As Advertised in the Winnipeg SUN

Jets have time to rest

The NHL's busiest team since Gary Bettman and Don Fehr ended the game's dumbest lockout, allowed itself to exhale, Friday, and you could almost feel the breeze as it lined up for the annual team photo.

After 42 games in 83 days, a tour schedule that would make Bruce Springsteen proud, players were sent home Friday and told not to show up again until Sunday morning.

Even the mad professors of the coaching fraternity were going home to put their feet up, not tinker with game plans.

"There will be none of that," head man Claude Noel vowed. "All the tinkering will be in my garage. I'm going to let my mind go free. I'm going to be a regular Winnipegger. And just do something else."

The problem is, many regular Winnipeggers use idle time to fret about their hockey team.

Thanks to three straight wins, Noel won't.

"It's just to re-charge. I need it," he said. "And so do players. No one else has 42 games. That